4070 reviews thread

[Aapje]

But the point is that you make that decision to buy in the moment, you don't say "I shall buy this in three weeks". In three weeks you say "is this the best card for me now".

I'm re-evaluating all the time. I don't just wake up and decide that I'll buy a card that day.

Also, the period in which I plan to buy a card is more like 2 years, than 3 weeks. The worse the value, the longer I wait.

Basically, I have a range of acceptable performance, a desired TDP, a desired price and I also make an estimation of the value, which deteriorates over time. Although the value of my current card also deteriorates over time, so...

 

[Aapje]

So your claim of pricing estimates were nonsense then?

I chose not to engage with your question since I don't think that you argue in good faith. This response also perfectly fits that belief.

 

[Heartbreaker]

I chose not to engage with your question since I don't think that you argue in good faith. This response also perfectly fits that belief.

No bad faith, just honest belief that your original claim was nonsense. Making up rationalizations about unsubstantiated rumors provides no predictive benefit.

 

[Aapje]

No bad faith, just honest belief that your original claim was nonsense.

You were pretending that I can predict exact prices. I can just make an educated guess.

My guess is that we'll see more permanent price decreases, and quite possibly a 4070 Super in due time, to provide more value, at no real cost to them (as it's just a less deep cut). I have strong doubts that these prices can be sustained over the next 2 years, or even over the next 6 months. However, I think that prices will remain relatively poor compared to the past and we won't see a $400 4070, but $500 doesn't seem unrealistic if they want the card to sell in decent quantities.

But there is a lot of uncertainty due to Nvidia's clear reluctance to lower prices and them potentially not caring as much about low sales due to their AI successes. However, I put very little stock in the rumors about price increases that I see floating around as well.

I also think that big companies like these have a hard time responding, so things often take a lot longer than seems reasonable. It's also not unlikely that they want to bring the 4060 Ti and 4060 before they are going to consider any real changes.

Of course, there are a bunch of uncertainties like remaining 3000 quantities and what AMD will do, although there are no signs that AMD will do something really significant.

 

[VirtualLarry]

RTX 4070 has more under the hood? Factory power-limited to meet a price-point? Jay investigates.

 

[coercitiv]

RTX 4070 has more under the hood? Factory power-limited to meet a price-point? Jay investigates.

We've digested that video already, here. To put it nicely, Jay played too loose with his math, resulting in some less than useful conclusions. The electrical limit discussion still stands though, though unfortunately the price discussion is a much hotter topic at the moment.

 

[Kocicak]

.... Crazy that people are still paying over $400 for 8GB Nvidia cards; madness. There's a 3060ti, 3070, and 3070ti in the top 12, I can't even wrap my brain around that. The 3070ti costs more than the 4070.

...
This can help shoppers that read this thread to make a more informed purchasing decision. Instead of letting groupthink push them to buy the 4070 because of a carefully crafted marketing strategy. Reading that most are not choosing it, and why, may cause them to take pause before pulling the trigger. ...

I am afraid that an impartial observer would see a large amount of groupthink in all those negative reviews and comments as well.

And this negative (in my view unreasonably negative) wibe in the reviews and comments could have made some people not to buy 4070 and buy some other cards with much worse value per dollar instead.

Sometimes being objective is the best thing to do and causes the least amount od damage.

 

[coercitiv]

I am afraid that an impartial observer would see a large amount of groupthink in all those negative reviews and comments as well.

How is the impartial observer supposed to be exposed to "a large amount of groupthink" in this thread when this community is nowhere near a consensus with regards to the product? What is happening in this community is the exact opposite of groupthinking, every little detail gets to be put under a microscope and analyzed to death.

 

[Kocicak]

Why do you think I was speaking specifically about this thread? I meant "negative reviews and comments" as generally as possible.

 

[In2Photos]

Why do you think I was speaking specifically about this thread? I meant "negative reviews and comments" as generally as possible.

So we're only supposed to share positive thoughts? That's not how this works.

 

[coercitiv]

Why do you think I was speaking specifically about this thread? I meant "negative reviews and comments" as generally as possible.

Because the person you replied to was talking about the discussion in this thread and how it relates to other communities.

But I'll indulge you, can you please point to "negative reviews" of the 4070 from the mainstream media? Let's discuss them, see if their arguments hold ground, after all this is what this thread is meant to be doing.

 

[Heartbreaker]

You were pretending that I can predict exact prices. I can just make an educated guess.

You were pretending you could use rumors to predict prices, so I called you on it.

My guess is that we'll see more permanent price decreases, and quite possibly a 4070 Super in due time, to provide more value, at no real cost to them (as it's just a less deep cut). I have strong doubts that these prices can be sustained over the next 2 years, or even over the next 6 months. However, I think that prices will remain relatively poor compared to the past and we won't see a $400 4070, but $500 doesn't seem unrealistic if they want the card to sell in decent quantities.

Prices will get lower in due time?? Which is anywhere from 6 months to 2 years?? So no real prediction at all.

IMO, there definitely won't be a NVidia 4000 price cut before new models drop around June from both camps. NVidia might do a pre-emptive cut then to make AMD's life harder, but even that I don't think likely this time.

Right now the main thing of interest will be waiting to see the Navi 32 cards. Navi 33 is in laptops and looks kind of mediocre, and they will almost certainly be dreaded 8GB cards (as will NVidia 4060/Ti). So of this generation the only interesting thing left is Navi 32. Navi 32 will likely have a 16GB version that is probably faster and more expensive than 4070, and a slower 12GB model that undercuts 4070. This is the biggest chance for a NVidia adjustment, but as before, I still don't think it that likely, but I definitely don't think they will make any adjustment until about this point.

 

[Heartbreaker]

EDIT: I checked Newegg and the 4070 is nowhere to be found. While various 4070ti models are selling. Crazy that people are still paying over $400 for 8GB Nvidia cards; madness. There's a 3060ti, 3070, and 3070ti in the top 12, I can't even wrap my brain around that. The 3070ti costs more than the 4070.

I have seen this just about forever for all tech parts CPUs and GPUs from every manufacturer. People buy previous generation parts at higher prices than new generation parts that outperform them for less money.

To a large section of the population, this is all one huge incomprehensible mess and they will just buy the first thing that looks OK, in their price range when they need something.

Also it's not just computers, but in most products. I remember there was a generation of Honda Civic that was terrible. It got lambasted in reviews, and Honda rolled out early refreshes to correct it. Yet I was baffled to find it was still sales leader here in Canada during the years it was getting clobbered, because most people don't keep up on details very much, and have the idea that Honda Civic is the best small car, even when research would show them it isn't.

I'm no long baffled by this, it's just the way it is. People that spend time on forums weighing over tiny details and are up on every model change are a tiny minority.

 

[Kocicak]

But I'll indulge you, can you please point to "negative reviews" of the 4070 from the mainstream media? ...

I just reviewed a few written mainstream reviews and they seem balanced and objective. The bulk of the "unreasonable sh*tstorm" probably resides in comments and possibly in some youtube videos as well. I am afraid I do not have time to carefully watch and evaluate these.

 

[Dribble]

Looking back I suspect the reason the 3xxx series was relatively cheap was because it was produced on a completely different node to Nvidia's high margin chips (gpu compute, ai, etc). The downside of moving to a cutting edge node is Nvidia is now given a choice for every wafer of producing desktop gpu's that sell for one amount or producing AI chips that sell for 10 times as much. For a profits first company that's not much of a choice. Hence they want to limit 4xxx production, hence they keep the prices high.

The solution would be to make desktop gpu's on a slightly older node with a lot more capacity.

That said for all the rage Nvidia still controls the sales as they are still mostly the best value at their price range, and that is basically true of the 4070 - you can hate the price all you like but it's not like anyone else is offering a better deal so it's still the best choice.

 

[Aapje]

You were pretending you could use rumors to predict prices, so I called you on it.

I said 'estimate,' not 'predict'. Don't change my words so you can attack me for something I never wrote.

Prices will get lower in due time?? Which is anywhere from 6 months to 2 years?? So no real prediction at all.

In no way does your 'summary' reflect what I said. I said that I don't expect significant changes before the 4060 Ti release (which you agree with). I said that I don't expect prices to go below a certain floor. I said that I do expect a Super variant to come for the current MSRP or perhaps below. Etc.

You don't have to be impressed by my analysis, but you can at least be honest about what I said, rather than falsely claim that I my analysis boils down to nothing more than 'prices will get lower in due time.'

Right now the main thing of interest will be waiting to see the Navi 32 cards.

The latest rumors are that N33 will come first and that a competitive variant of N32 can't be sold with sufficient margin. These rumors seem rather peculiar, given the likely BOM cost. Perhaps this is disinformation to cover up a respin. Or perhaps they need to get rid of Navi 21 stock first. Or perhaps they just like the Navi 21 profits better. In any case, I distrust the accuracy of the rumors.

I do doubt whether N32 will really offer much better value since this AMD generation doesn't seem very impressive.

 

[Kocicak]

I have seen this just about forever for all tech parts CPUs and GPUs from every manufacturer. People buy previous generation parts at higher prices than new generation parts that outperform them for less money.
...
I'm no long baffled by this, it's just the way it is. People that spend time on forums weighing over tiny details and are up on every model change are a tiny minority.

One could expect though that most of the "not so well informed" people are buying prebuilt PCs. A huge number of "normal people" use just laptops.

The trouble I was trying to point out is that when somebody tries to find some info about 4070, he can stumble upon some unreasonably negative comment or video or whatever, and as a result of that ends up with something worse than 4070.

While unreasonably positive information from the manufacturer is generally expected and understood, unreasonably negative information can cause damage and wrong decision.

 

[Hans Gruber]

The problem with the 4070. It equals the 3080 but not the 3080ti performance. So will the 4060ti equal the 3070 in performance? That is not much of a performance uplift and NIB 3070 and 3080 cards may cannibalize 4060 and 4060ti sales.

 

[Aapje]

@Dribble

In hindsight, I think that Ampere had a great design, held back by a rather poor, but cheap node. Ada made a huge jump per mm2 of silicon, even though the basic design doesn't seem all that much improved compared to Ampere. It's just that the jump that they made from Samsung 8 (which is really a 10 nm node with some improvements) to TSMC 5 was more like two node improvements, while AMD only got one node improvement, from TSMC 7 to 5 (and then they also have at least one serious hardware bug, apparently, that requires them to neuter the cards).

 

[jpiniero]

So will the 4060ti equal the 3070 in performance?

Should be slightly above but more or less.

 

[blckgrffn]

@Dribble

In hindsight, I think that Ampere had a great design, held back by a rather poor, but cheap node. Ada made a huge jump per mm2 of silicon, even though the basic design doesn't seem all that much improved compared to Ampere. It's just that the jump that they made from Samsung 8 (which is really a 10 nm node with some improvements) to TSMC 5 was more like two node improvements, while AMD only got one node improvement, from TSMC 7 to 5 (and then they also have at least one serious hardware bug, apparently, that requires them to neuter the cards).

I think this is also a contributor to the slow walk of performance uplift in Ada for the dollar.

Ampere they made a decision to short vram in order to have a real reason to upgrade in about three years after purchase, save for the “fire in the hole” 3090.

With Ada making the huge node jump, they are pretty much tapped out for a huge efficiency/density gain for what might be a fairly long time. It’ll be surprising if they make another such jump this decade.

So in order to ensure the upgrade cycle continues, we are getting a very conservative 4000 series to allow a 5000 series that may see basically zero silicon technology improvements to exist.

I trust Nvidia to play the long game and protect their own sales cycles. If next summer the current 4070 becomes the 5060 Ti and we see a similarly small down stack shift of performance and capacity, I will not be surprised at all. I think the next Gen refresh of Nvidia desktop GPUs could be quite underwhelming, but some will be pleased the “finally got the names right” or some such thing.

 

[Heartbreaker]

Looking back I suspect the reason the 3xxx series was relatively cheap was because it was produced on a completely different node to Nvidia's high margin chips (gpu compute, ai, etc). The downside of moving to a cutting edge node is Nvidia is now given a choice for every wafer of producing desktop gpu's that sell for one amount or producing AI chips that sell for 10 times as much. For a profits first company that's not much of a choice. Hence they want to limit 4xxx production, hence they keep the prices high.

The reason NVidia went to Samsung was almost certainly because Samsung 8nm offered them significant savings vs TSMC 7nm. This was certainly one major factor in more aggressive pricing.

Another factor would constrained VRAM amounts. Far from some kind of nefarious ploy to force imminent upgrades. Lower amounts of memory, lower the BOM, and this another factor in the pricing.

A final factor may have been information leaks about how good AMD RDNA 2 was, leading to more aggressive pricing out of the gate.

 

[Heartbreaker]

The problem with the 4070. It equals the 3080 but not the 3080ti performance. So will the 4060ti equal the 3070 in performance? That is not much of a performance uplift and NIB 3070 and 3080 cards may cannibalize 4060 and 4060ti sales.

3080 cards are basically out of stock except for stragglers. Hard to gauge how much 3070 stock remains, but we may see a price cut to clear the remainder before lower end 4000 cards ship. I don't expect they will have much impact on low end 4000 cards.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Had to go pick up a USB cable at Altex, and for anyone who is from the San Antonio or Austin area, they know that place is the rip off of all rip offs when it comes to gpus. Like they had 3060 Ti for $530 and 7900 XT for $1000. But thought it was kind of funny seeing the 4070 they had for $640. Wonder why they're only price gouging that one $40.

 

[Kocicak]

I just tested something I was meaning to test before: I ran two short runs multiple times in Hogwarts legacy (all ultra incl RT), first in native 2560x1440 resolution, second time with DLSS Quality, and third time DLSS Quality + frame generation and I got these results:

55 - 85 - 120
40 - 70 - 100

I must admit I am not well schooled in Nvidia technology, but why are not the third numbers multiples of two of the second numbers?

Is it because frame generation uses some resources which were used previously so that the input for frame generation decreases?

BTW going from 40 to 100 fps feels like MAGIC.